


the rabbit in the moon

by forlornithologist



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Character Study, Gen, ish, moody, very short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 06:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14868686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forlornithologist/pseuds/forlornithologist
Summary: Shin decides to go to war.





	the rabbit in the moon

**Author's Note:**

> minor characters give me life  
> warning for canon-typical bad habits, bad language, bad people

If you still cared about living or dying at this point, then you were in the wrong business. Sometimes, Shin wondered if that were a good thing. Humanity owed its perpetuation to fear and caution as much as it did curiosity and daring. But to be a Red Dragon was to walk on the veil. Sometimes, looking through a mirror darkly, you saw a face where there was none.

That was the problem with Lin. He was so sure that he was real. At least Spiegel had the decency to move at a completely different tempo from them all, as if they were all in a movie, and he was the only one who could hear the background music.

(“Call me Spike,” he said over a whiskey neat. Sure thing, Spiegel.)  
(A wry grin: perceivable more by the crinkling of the corners of his eyes than a choice of the mouth.)

And now things were going to hell. Slowly, of course, and inconspicuously. The way a cat hunkers down before pouncing. But still--unmistakably going to hell. 

The bird on Vicious’s shoulder seemed to think as much, a flash of its red eyes that said it was just waiting. Shin wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen Vicious feed the thing, except for when it launched from his arm to pick over fresh corpses. It always went for the eyes first.

Shin snapped his lighter open and aflame in one deft move, bowing his head to light the cigarette. A middling brand. Not too fancy, but not too cheap, like Spiegel’s. 

(When a downwind Vicious had realized that Shin smoked the same shit, he’d drawn his sword and cut the still-smoldering tip off. Shin spat out the rest on the ground. Yeah, point taken.)

Now, Vicious was going over the plan with his chosen. Shin’s insouciant smoke didn’t go unnoticed. Vicious held his low, thrilling voice for only a moment to look disdainfully at Shin. A few curious glances from the others following his eyes. Then he resumed his speech coolly, like he weren’t a melodramatic egomaniac who suddenly couldn’t stand a little smoke. What a joke. Shin huffed out a breath that, had it come just a few years earlier, could’ve been a laugh. 

(“No, there’s no body.” Vicious said. So boredly, as if describing the weather. Well, it didn’t rain that night, or the next. Shin burned through four packs of the cheapest shit he could find, and on the third day it poured.)


End file.
